Visit by Obama Is Overshadowed by Mandela Vigil

JOHANNESBURG — Nelson Mandela always wanted to go quietly. Despite his stature as a global icon, he sought a dignified withdrawal from public life in recent years. Privately he told aides of his desire for a quiet funeral, stripped of pomp.

That is not how it is happening now. With Mr. Mandela in critical condition in a hospital from a serious lung infection, and as President Obama arrived Friday for a state visit, the country was in the grip of passions, ceremony and controversy as its people come to terms with finally bidding Mr. Mandela farewell.

Outside the hospital gates, South Africans of all races prayed, sang and dropped flowers for their revered father figure. Less harmoniously, a simmering family feud over his funeral arrangements burst into public view. A 65-year-old woman claiming to be his illegitimate daughter stepped forward, demanding to be let into the hospital to meet him.

In the evening, Mr. Obama entered the fray, faced with a delicate diplomatic balancing act involving statesmanship, policy and respect for a fading hero. Mr. Obama, who had planned weeks ago to visit Mr. Mandela during this trip, wishes to honor the man who inspired his career in politics, mindful that he is arriving as South Africans are sorrowful over their beloved former president’s condition. On Saturday the White House announced that Mr. Obama would meet later in the day with relatives of Mr. Mandela, but not visit the former leader at the hospital.

“I don’t need a photo-op,” Mr. Obama said while on his way to South Africa, where he landed just a few miles from the Pretoria hospital where Mr. Mandela has been lying in intensive care. “Right now, our main concern is with his well-being, his comfort, and with the family’s well-being and comfort.”

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Outside the hospital gates, South Africans of all races prayed, sang and dropped flowers for their revered father figure.Credit
Filippo Monteforte/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

At any other time, Mr. Obama’s arrival would have been a symbolically potent moment with resonance for both countries: America’s first black president visiting a nation that only two decades ago shook off the yoke of white minority rule.

But for South Africans, their hearts, if not their eyes, were focused on something else.

“This trip is overshadowed by Nelson Mandela’s illness,” said Justice Malala, a political commentator and columnist. “Its impact will be blunted because people’s attention is elsewhere.”

Some unfolding events seemed to be exactly what Mr. Mandela had hoped to avoid. A court hearing in a provincial town on Friday exposed a bitter family rift over arrangements for his funeral.

Mr. Mandela has long been painfully aware of the divides within his family, and on Friday lawyers and magistrates confirmed that 16 Mandela relatives, led by his eldest daughter, Makaziwe Mandela, had filed a lawsuit against a grandson, Mandla Mandela, a tribal chief.

A report from South Africa’s national broadcaster pointed to a macabre squabble at work: the plaintiffs want to compel Mandla to rebury three relatives, who had been exhumed and moved some years ago from the family graveyard at Qunu, Nelson Mandela’s home village, back in their original graves.

The court action appeared to stem from an argument over where Mr. Mandela should be buried. Mandla prefers a site at the headquarters of his tribal village of Mvezo, where Mr. Mandela was born; the rest of the family wants him to be buried at Qunu, where he grew up.

Among some South Africans, the government’s careful management of news about Mr. Mandela even stoked speculation that it was somehow keeping him alive in order to facilitate Mr. Obama’s trip. The government flatly rejected such rumors.

“Urban legend,” said Mac Maharaj, the presidential spokesman. “That has been put to us before, and it is wrong. People take the government’s report as accurate.”

Mr. Obama, who is accompanied by his wife, Michelle, and their daughters, Sasha and Malia, arrived from Senegal and was due to travel to Tanzania on Sunday. His long-awaited African tour is intended to stress the importance of trade, not aid, for the continent.

“Everything we do is designed to make sure that Africa is not viewed as a dependent, as a charity case, but is instead viewed as a partner,” he told reporters on Friday.

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President Obama, his wife, Michelle, and their daughters landed in South Africa on Friday.Credit
Doug Mills/The New York Times

In South Africa, Mr. Obama plans to salute Mr. Mandela’s life with a visit on Sunday to Robben Island, the prison where Mr. Mandela spent 18 years in a tiny cell, now a somber tourist attraction inhabited mainly by penguins.

Mr. Obama’s host here will be President Jacob Zuma, a controversial figure who in some ways epitomizes the disappointments of the post-Mandela era.

A charismatic populist, Mr. Zuma has attracted fire for his views — he is a practicing polygamist who believes all women should get married — while his penchant for singing his signature song, “Bring Me My Machine Gun,” causes some supporters to cringe.

Mr. Zuma’s reputation has been dented by a 2006 rape trial (even though he was acquitted), corruption accusations and his handling of the police shooting of 34 striking platinum miners last August.

On Saturday, he will meet with Mr. Obama to discuss economic development, security issues in Sudan and Central Africa, and efforts to promote democracy on the continent. A day later, on Sunday, Mr. Obama is scheduled to deliver the major speech of his trip at the University of Cape Town, where Robert F. Kennedy made a famous address in 1966.

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Watching and Waiting in South Africa

The Times’s Marcus Mabry reports from Johannesburg, where South Africans are closely watching Nelson Mandela’s condition.

It is unclear whether either side will nod to the more controversial aspects of America’s historical engagement with South Africa: accusations that the C.I.A. helped the apartheid police arrest Mr. Mandela in 1962, or the fact that the State Department removed Mr. Mandela from its terrorist list only in 2008 — 15 years after he was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

Along with enthusiastic well-wishers, Mr. Obama is expected to confront protests about his foreign policies from a coalition of trade unionists, students, lawyers and Muslim groups.

For South Africans the American president’s visit was not the biggest story of the day. The tide of public worry has focused on the Mediclinic Heart Hospital in Pretoria, where a wall of handwritten notes and balloons has become a shrine of sorts to Mr. Mandela.

His wife, Graça Machel, sleeps in a room nearby, remaining far from public view. In recent days, visiting relatives have emerged from the hospital with often worrisome news. “I won’t lie, it doesn’t look good,” Makaziwe Mandela said on Thursday.

But on Friday Mr. Mandela’s former wife Winnie Madikizela-Mandela offered a note of hope. He was showing “great improvement” compared with a few days earlier, she told reporters.

Tension over the intense news media coverage at the hospital, stoked by criticism from the Mandela family, continued on Friday. The police detained a South African filmmaker who flew a radio-controlled helicopter, with a camera mounted underneath, over the scene.

Despite his stated desire for a quiet goodbye, Mr. Mandela has long been used to the idea of leveraging his celebrity in the service of his struggle for freedom, said Mr. Malala, the political analyst.

“He was always someone who understood the value of spectacle,” he said. “The liberation struggle needed a face, a symbol. And he understood that was the price that had to be paid.”

Rick Lyman contributed reporting from Johannesburg, Lydia Polgreen from New York and Alan Cowell from London.